Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 09:51:54 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, vj2786x@mbox4.singnet.com.sg Subject: Re: Unix and FreeBSD Message-ID: <199811241751.JAA08616@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <000101be17cd$be2b5d00$2cca15a5@mikhails>
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>From: "Alvin" <vj2786x@mbox4.singnet.com.sg> >Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 01:13:16 +0800 >I'm a newbie to Unix and I'd like to learn Unix. However, the software is >far too expensive for me. Hmmm.... Are you sure? I don't know whether the recently-announced Sun initiative with respect to low-cost Solaris 2.x licenses applies to you or not, but it may well. >How similar is FreeBSD to commercial Unix? Well, this depends on a lot of things, such as: * Which commercial flavors of UNIX you're interested in -- each vendor has some "value add" which amounts to differentiation. Some of these are somewhat more useful than others, but nearly all represent divergence from the common base, and thus additional learning curve for a person. These effects may be fairly minimal for casual users or folks who just use certain products; they tend to be most noticable for those of us who are systems administrators. * Which release of FreeBSD you're (planning) to use. Since FreeBSD is a "work in progress," there are aspects of it that are undergoing change. (On the other hand, this also applies to current commercial UNIX flavors; the only ones to which it does not apply are those that are no longer being developed. I presume that these are not of much interest to you.) In any case, there is a vast underlying philosophy of approach that nearly all variants of UNIX have in common, to a greater or lesser degree, and that distinguishes UNIX implementations from (say) OSs such as MVS or VM, or Microsoft's application loaders. In spite of the "SysV" vs. "BSD" approaches to many things, for example, I still find Kernighan & Pike's _The UNIX Programming Environment_ to be a classic for discussing several aspects of this underlying philosophy (and this, despite the age of the book, as well). >Will knowing FreeBSD help me in using commercial Unix later on? Quite probably. Depends somewhat on how good you are at distinguishing the critical design decisions from superficial implementation details, and picking up the essentials. One thing that can be *very* helpful is to compare a couple of different implementations; for example, FreeBSD vs. Solaris 2.x for the x86. (For even more difference, try FreeBSD vs. Solaris 2.x for the SPARC -- I have found Solaris 2.x for SPARC much easier to use and work with than the x86 version, but that may be a reflection on my background.) david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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